Description

Poetry. Latinx Studies. Jewish Studies. Women's Studies. Translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe. Bilingual Edition. The Word Works International Editions. In lyric poems of startling directness, Laura Cesarco Eglin explores the death of her father, the beauty of her country, her Jewish ancestry, and the invisible connections between the living and what's "beyond." Translated collaboratively by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe, accompanied by the original Spanish, each poem retains the delicacy as well as the power of Eglin's explorations of that which we cannot always see but must always feel. Says Aviya Kushner, "These poems excel in the art of astonishing transformation. Lipstick becomes a remembrance of the selection line of life versus death in the Holocaust. An eyelash becomes the site of all hope, glued to the chest, and brushing hair turns into a chance to learn 'eccentricity in community.' These beautiful translations seem to know their own irresistibility, as they capture the poet's understanding."

Author Bio

Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay, author of REBORN IN INK (The Word Works, 2019), CALLING WATER BY ITS NAME, translated by Scott Spanbauer (Mouthfeel Press, 2016), Sastrería (Yaugurú, 2011), and Los brazos del saguaro (Yaugurú, 2015), with an MA in English from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MFA from the University of Texas. A selection of poems from Sastrería was translated collaboratively into English with Teresa Williams, and subsequently published as the chapbook Tailor Shop: Threads (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Cesarco Eglin has also published the chapbook Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (The Lune, 2015). Her poems and translations (from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician) have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including Modern Poetry in Translation, Eleven Eleven, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, Spoon River Poetry Review, Arsenic Lobster, International Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Blood Orange Review, Timber, Pretty Owl Poetry, Pilgrimage, Periódico de Poesía, and more. Her poems are also featured in the Uruguayan women's section of Palabras Errantes, Plusamérica: Latin American Literature in Translation. Cesarco Eglin is the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst (co●im●press, 2018). She is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books.

Author City: BOULDER, CO USA

Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of eleven books of fiction, poetry and nonfiction including the poetry collection Cinema Muto (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Open Selection Award, and the story collection The Alice Stories (University of Nebraska Press), which won the Prairie Schooner Fiction Book Prize. Her first story collection The Dogeater (University of Missouri Press) won the Associated Writing Programs Award in Short Fiction, and Space (Alonquin Books), her memoir about growing up near Cape Kennedy during the moon race, won the Alex Award from the American Library Association. She's also the translator of Javier Etchevarren's FABLE OF AN INCONSOLABLE MAN (Action Books, 2017).